Neet to open old Powerpoint files in PP08

[Mark_Noosa]

Version: 2008
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
Processor: Intel

I recently tried to open some old 97-2004 PPT docs using PPMac08 and got an error message saying (in each case) the file "may be corrupt, in use, not a type recognized by Powerpoint or the file extension may not match the internal format of the file". There's no way all these old PPT files can be corrupt.

Suggestions re fix, conversion filter or app ....?

 

[michael_carr]

I would try opening them in 2004 and re-save them one more time in that, and then try opening them again in 2008. As much as I dislike the idea of doing so, I'm keeping 2004 for probably all eternity (which probably means a few more years), until all of these bugs are worked out. (And I haven't yet installed Snow Leopard, so I'm probably going to keep one machine on 10.5.8 for awhile as well... I'm not having these problems on the latter.)

 

[Steve Rindsberg]

I would try opening them in 2004 and re-save them one more time in that, and then try opening

them again in 2008. As much as I dislike the idea of doing so, I'm keeping 2004 for probably all
eternity (which probably means a few more years), until all of these bugs are worked out. (And I
haven't yet installed Snow Leopard, so I'm probably going to keep one machine on 10.5.8 for
awhile as well... I'm not having these problems on the latter.)

Sensible approach.

And since 2004 has VBA, the whole Open/Resave process can be automated.

Batch re-save presentations; update older presentations to newer PowerPoint version
http://www.pptfaq.com/FAQ00740.htm

As written it's Windows-only but if anybody's interested, we could probably arrange to beat that
out of it.

 

[Mark_Noosa]

Thanks for the help. Now trying to source a copy of 2004.